I listened to 365 albums this year

There are more than 50,000 songs uploaded to Spotify every day. There’s a lot of good music out there, but it’s so hard to find diamonds when you have to dig through all this rough. Honestly, there’s so much music being released everywhere all of the time that no one person could listen to it all. But perhaps one truly dedicated person could come close. So on New Year’s Eve of 2024, I decided that for 2025, I wanted to listen to one album every day.

I did this for a few reasons. The big one is I love music, and I want to listen to as much of it as I can while I still have ears and a brain to use them.
I wanted to expand my tastes, step out of my comfort zone, and explore some genres I haven’t really sunk my teeth into until now. I also wanted to address some musical blind spots I had; there’s a long list of classic albums I just hadn’t listened to until I started this challenge: Power Corruption and Lies, Blowout Comb, and Songs In The Key Of Life, to name a few.

I also wanted to hone my own fledgling composition skills. I’m studying Audio Technology at NMC, and part of that degree requires some music theory classes, which include songwriting as part of my final exams. By exposing myself to as wide a range of music as I can, I’m opening my mind to the possibilities of what’s even possible.

The challenge itself is pretty simple. Every day, I find an album I’ve never heard before, and listen to it from front to back, no skips—Any artist, genre, time period, or other category.

It went a lot smoother than I expected at first. I found time to listen easily: while I was driving, doing school work, or playing video games. I was almost always caught up, and when I wasn’t, it was easy enough to jam in an extra album or two.

Partway through summer, I got a horrible cold and was out of commission for almost a week, and I fell out of the habit of listening to music entirely. Before long, I was over a month behind. So I hunkered down, put on my headphones, and got to work. As of writing, I have listened to 325 albums front to back, totalling almost 243 hours of listening (not counting repeats or albums I’ve listened to before).

All things considered, I’m happy I did this; it was a great idea. There were many albums I had little interest in that I only listened to because I had a quota to meet. More often than not, I really enjoyed those albums, and I wouldn’t have given them the time of day if it weren’t for this challenge. I found a lot of good music this year, and I’d like to share some of it with you.

Balloonerisms by Mac Miller is my album of the year. It was my most anticipated album of 2025, and it did not disappoint. The production is dark and surreal, and Miller’s lyrics are sharp, funny, and raw. I didn’t start listening to him until after he had died and Circles had come out, so this album was the first and most likely last Mac Miller album rollout I’ll ever get to experience. This is special to me, and I don’t expect everyone to resonate with it as strongly as I did.

Another early favorite was The Mollusk, by Ween. A bizarre late ‘90s pseudo-concept alt-rock about the ocean: it’s eclectic and challenging in sound and scope, but simply refuses to take itself or anything else seriously for a second. I aspire to this level of carefree brilliance and whimsy.
The Scholars by Car Seat Headrest is the album that reminded me why I love rock and roll. A sprawling, operatic, bombastic triumph of Prog Rock. Clocking in at 70 minutes long, it’s an album that I will not soon forget.

Isola by kent is a brooding and melodramatic Smashing Pumpkins-esque ‘90s sad rock album. The vibes are immaculate, with booming guitar riffs and wailing lyrics that hit you so hard you forget the whole thing is sung in Swedish.

United States of Horror is one of the most bizarre, abrasive, and aggressive albums I’ve heard in a long time. Glitchy hip hop mixed with industrial metal and punk, Ho99o9 tries their hardest to blow your speakers out and leave even the most hardcore listeners’ ears ringing. If you like heavy stuff, you need to check this album out. It blew my mind.

HUMAN ERROR AT KENNY’S HOUSE is a collaboration between acclaimed underground hip hop producer Kenny Segal and experimental jazz trio HUMAN ERROR CLUB. It sounds like the four of them threw themselves into a blender just to see what would happen.

Lavender Country’s self-titled 1973 debut is something special to me. I don’t really know how to write about this album. It’s beautiful, and it’s queer to its core in a time when that wasn’t accepted anywhere, let alone in country music. It’s a celebration and declaration of identity, content to simply delight in itself. There is no end to this thought, not one I’ve come up with yet. I’m going to be thinking about this album for a long time.

I’ve come to realize that my opening statement was wrong. While there is a lot of rough, there are countless diamonds. There were very few albums I listened to that I didn’t like. It kind of rekindled my hope for contemporary music. It doesn’t matter what happens, good music will always be made, and I’ll be right here, listening to it for as long as I can.